


Alchera

by Coraniaid



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26703304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coraniaid/pseuds/Coraniaid
Summary: On Alchera, Shepard reflects on her death and rebirth.





	Alchera

She doesn't remember dying.

She remembers the ship breaking up around her. Remembers the engines struggling, the alarms wailing in her ears. Remembers the sudden burst of adrenaline that came with the final explosion that tore the _Normandy_ apart. Her heart pounding like a drum in the silent vacuum of space; her panicked struggle to breath as she realised her hardsuit was leaking oxygen. She remembers the pale disc of Alchera growing ever larger before her eyes; becoming the brightest and most important thing in the universe. But she doesn't remember dying.

Death is not lived through.

She does, later, remember the growing realisation that she was going to die; that this time there would be no last minute reprieve. No clever tricks left, no chance of a lucky escape. She remembers her limbs growing heavy and her vision starting to blur. Sometimes she thinks she remembers accepting it.

And then she remembers waking up. Lying on her back on in a strange medical bay, surrounded by strangers and enemies, in a galaxy that had jumped two years into the future and left her behind.

* * *

She doesn't think she dreamed, when she was … asleep. If she did have dreams, she can't remember any of them. There's no darkness or blank spots in her memory, just a discontinuity. A sudden disorienting lurch from one place and time to another.

When she woke up she'd felt first nothing but panic, at first. Then resentment. Then guilt.

Panic because her body was still flooded with adrenaline. Before she was fully aware of her surroundings, she was suddenly short of breath, gasping for air that her body was sure she was missing. The wail of the alarms she remembered from the _Normandy_ was still ringing in her ears: it took her a moment to realise that the alarms she was hearing were real, not memories.

Panic gave way to resentment because surely, after all she'd done, all she'd given, she deserved better than to wake up to barked orders and more enemies to fight. She'd never given much thought to what happened, after you died. Not much, she'd suspected, even before the Reapers. Hard to believe a galaxy full of batarians could be the work of anything benevolent. But part of her had always hoped to be proved wrong; had envied the confidence of those who thought otherwise. She wishes, now, that she'd taken the chance to talk about that with Chief Williams, instead of brushing off the marine's one attempt.

And then resentment gave way to guilt, because she's somehow still alive, when so many who should be aren't. Ashley Williams isn't, for one. The fact that Ash is dead was one of the first things she remembered. Williams, and Richard Jenkins, and too many others across the galaxy. Good people dead because she hadn't done enough.

As she staggered from room to room, fighting faceless enemies and watching strangers die, she found herself desperately hoping that they've all ended up somewhere better than this.

* * *

The first few days, whenever she looked into a mirror she saw only a stranger's face.

Not because she was missing scars. Or at least, not only because of that, though it's strange adjusting to their absence. Her scars had been a reminder of who she was, of where she'd come from. The long thin scar over the left eye a reminder of the batarian slaver who'd tried to kill her when she was sixteen; the smaller, wider scar on her throat the only evidence of a pirate on Torfan who'd somehow managed to get behind her.

But she doesn't need those reminders. Not really. These events happened, helped to shape her. The scars themselves are only superficial.

The problem wasn't even that she was convinced there's now a faint red glow, half-visible around the edges of her irises. If anything, that was a welcome distraction. Something that stopped her making full eye contact with her reflection. Because the person looking out of those eyes, on the other side of the mirror - that wasn't her, was it? She'd stolen somebody's face, stolen somebody's life. And they were going to want it back.

She's been avoiding Liara ever since their awkward reunion on Illium.

Liara has to know, she thinks. She's somehow managed to fool the others - maybe just because they'd all wanted, needed to be fooled - but the asari has to know. After everything they've been through, she has to.

When she'd first looked into Liara's face in her offices in Illium, she's sure that she saw disappointment, quickly and brutally suppressed. Liara had risked so much for her, given up so much to bring her back the way she was. And it hadn't been enough.

* * *

She spent a long time trying not to think about what Miranda claims to have done. Trying not to think about the fact that it should be impossible. Cerberus tell her that they've performed a miracle. Brought her back from the dead, an angry and vengeful ghost. The only human that the Reapers might be afraid of.

Nobody outside of Cerberus believes it, of course. They think she faked her death, somehow. That she survived the destruction of her ship, that she chose to let the Alliance think she was dead, all so she could sneak away and work for a conspiracy of traitors and mad scientists and anti-alien extremists. After Cerberus had killed Admiral Kahoku and his men, had tortured Corporal Toombs and so many others.

What sort of monster do they think she was, to have done something like that? What sort of monster do they think she is?

She makes a joke out of it; tries to brazen it out. Acts as nonchalantly as she can, the way everybody around her seems to want her to act. "I was only mostly dead," she says with a forced smirk, and is secretly disappointed when the C-Sec officers don't challenge her further.

But she knows she's meant to believe it. And she finds it difficult to do that.

No civilization in galactic history, as far as she knows, has ever seriously claimed to have brought a dead person back to life. Not the asari, not the salarians, not the turians. All species that have had access to technological marvels for thousands of years longer than hers. Even the krogan have yet to conquer death. Krogan are hard to kill, with all their regenerative powers and their secondary and tertiary organs, but once you manage it - and she should know - they stay dead.

Being dead is not something you recover from. Death is not something you're supposed to live through.

It gets harder to believe in the story the more she learns. Learning about Miranda's background; realising what a sufficiently wealthy human was already capable of doing. After Korlus, after seeing the experiments being carried out on the Blue Suns' planet. Row after row of cloned soldiers, grown in tanks to serve the whims of a would-be tyrant. Or after breaking into Hock's vault with Kasumi, and seeing the secrets that can hidden in a greybox.

Watching Kasumi lose herself in her partner's memories, she can't help but thinking about all the cybernetics lurking inside her own skull. Wonders what memories they might contain. What lies.

Growing a clone to adulthood in a tank, using cybernetics to fill its mind with artificial thoughts and memories: that seems a lot easier than performing miracles. That seems like the sort of thing that can be done, even without Collector support. And ripping fading sensations from a dying brain; uploading those stolen memories into a greybox? Trivial, surely, compared to raising the dead.

Okeer could have done it, she realises after Korlus. He'd wanted to breed the perfect krogan, devoted all his energies to achieving that. But if he'd wanted that krogan to think he was Overlord Kredak, back from the dead? He could surely have done that too. And if he'd wanted his perfect krogan to forget all memories of their time in the tank? Surely that wouldn't have been any more of a challenge.

And if an aging and embittered krogan warlord could do it, then the Illusive Man - with all the resources of Cerberus and the puppet companies it controls at his disposal - could certainly do it. Could certainly have done it. Might have...

Jacob had assured her she wasn't a clone, when they first met, but Jacob's not a scientist. He's a solider, like her. Why would Cerberus tell him anything other than the official story?

(She can hear Joker's voice, in the back of her mind. _Only an idiot believes the official story_. But does she really remember that conversation, or does she only think she does?)

It's certainly convenient that there's nobody left to talk to about how the Lazarus Project was supposed to work. That there were apparently no test cases before her, and no applications of years of groundbreaking research beyond recovering the life of one single soldier.

Nobody's ever explained to her why the base she was on was attacked, or what Wilson thought he was getting out of having the security mechs maraud across the station. There are easier and surer ways to kill an unconscious woman. But if somebody had wanted to tie up loose ends, give her a reason to leave quickly, remove any last lingering clues that might point to what had really happened on that station… well, they'd managed to do that pretty thoroughly, hadn't they?

And somebody must have left all those terminals for her to find, back when she woke up. All those unsecured or easily hacked terminals, full of reassuring messages to tell her that she really was who she remembered, really was the person they wanted her to think she'd been. Even an idiot wouldn't have believed that that was just coincidence. Somebody had set all that up for her to find.

She tries not to think about Wilson's face when he saw Miranda. Had he been surprised to see her because he'd assumed she was dead, or had he been surprised because he was expecting her to be alive and somewhere else? Had Miranda exposed a traitor, or had Wilson himself been betrayed?

She doesn't do a very good job of trying not think these things.

She tells herself she's having trouble sleeping because of the skylight. She isn't fooled.

* * *

Some of the things she remembers - some of the things she thinks she remembers - can't have happened. Not the way she thinks they did.

On Illium, Conrad had complained about her pointing a gun in his face, some time after they first met. Had acted as if she was some sort of thug, who'd draw a weapon on a civilian in the heart of the Citadel. She's sure that's not what happened.

Conrad's an idiot, sure, obnoxious and grating and obsessive enough to be more than a little creepy. But he's harmless, and she'd sworn an oath to protect people like him. From themselves, if she has to.

None of the people with her challenge Conrad's version of events; but what does that matter, when they weren't there? She doesn't think they were there, anyway. (Though maybe they were. Maybe she wasn't.)

As for the people who she thinks should know, well. She doesn't dare ask Garrus; he's so hurt and angry after Omega that she's not sure what he'd say. And Kaiden wouldn't tell her even if she knew how to reach him. That much has been clear since Horizon, at least.

But she'd known something was wrong long before that. When she was being quizzed by Miranda, the Cerberus officer had expected her to know the name of the human Councillor, but her mind had grown suddenly blank. She'd thrown a name out at random, and Miranda had nodded approvingly, so she must have guessed right ... only, hours later she'd suddenly had a vivid memory of watching somebody else be appointed to the role. The two memories can't both be true.

And before that, before she died … she remembers fighting Cerberus, but she was sure that they were some sort of Alliance black ops. Had Admiral Kohuku told her that? Had he known it, or had he only been guessing? Had he been wrong? She'd only learned of the group's existence after Edolus, trying to track down rumours of the missing Armistan Banes. Now half the galaxy seems to have heard of them. Had so much changed in the last two years? (Has she changed?)

And some of the things she should remember she doesn't.

She remembers being sixteen, the day the batarians came. She can remember the smell of smoke and fire and blood. She can remember her brother John shouting at her to run; she can remember the batarian slavers surrounding him and she can remember his shouts turning to screams. But she can't remember what he looked like.

She can remember watching him die, but she can't remember his face.

* * *

She put off coming here as long as she could.

She told herself it wasn't a priority. The dead weren't going to get up and walk away.

(Not like she had.)

There was always something more urgent to deal with; some more immediate problem that need to be solved. Recruiting more members for the mission; trying to mould a disparate band of killers and outcasts into a cohesive, functioning team. And she could always hear a nagging, doubting voice in the back of her mind, questioning and second-guessing her actions. _Is this what_ she _would have done? Is this what_ Shepard _would have done?_

So she stayed away from Alchera, when the message first came in, and stormed the Dantius Towers in search of an assassin.

After everything Nassana's mercenaries had done, pushing one of their leaders through the window felt good, felt righteous. It felt like she was dispensing justice. For a moment, she could imagine she really was the avenging spirit that Cerberus want her to be. It was only much later, when she woke up from dreams of falling helplessly into the darkness, that she started to think she understood the reproach she'd glimpsed in Samara's eyes.

Time passed, and she still stayed away from Alchera. On Tuchanka she fought a thresher maw with Grunt; was reunited with Urdnot Wrex, headbutted a vocal krogan clan leader who just wouldn't shut up. It's only when the dust settled that she wondered if there'd been some way to resolve things peacefully; something she could have said that would have made Uvenk an ally instead of an enemy. But is that something that the Butcher of Torfan would have asked herself? Has she lost the focus that made her who she was?

On the other end of the galaxy she blew up an abandoned Cerberus base with Jack; settled an argument between the convict and Miranda; tried her best to defend Tali from accusations of treason. She was going to let Jack shoot Avesh, until some impulse made her speak out against it; tried not to show her shock when she was able to face both biotics down and force them to put their differences aside; held Tali close when they found Rael'Zorah's body and then raged against the Admirals when they tried to convict her for her father's crimes. But still the nagging voice whispered to her in the back of her mind. Still she kept worrying if she was doing the right things.

Admiral Hackett's message has been sitting on her terminal for weeks now. Months, maybe. Somewhere along the way she's lost track of just how long it's been. And she can't put this off forever. They tell her she's on a suicide mission; and, privately, she's not sure she's going to prove them wrong.

She came down here alone. She'd told Miranda that she hardly needed back-up to visit a dead planet; told Tali that she'd never let anybody wearing a Cerberus uniform this close to the original _Normandy_.

The truth is that she came here to say goodbye. Not to Pressley, or to the Mako, or to any of the twenty missing men and women whose bodies the Admiral sent her to look for.

She came to say goodbye to Commander Shepard. Imperfect copy or damaged original, she's not the woman she used to be. That woman died, and death is not lived through.

* * *

All she can do is focus on the immediate task at hand. Just like old times. (Garrus and Joker keep saying that. After a while, she'd started wondering who they were trying to convince.)

Rummaging around in the wreckage and debris she finds one set of dog tags, then another. A third. She doesn't recognise any of the names. Didn't really expect to, at this point. She keeps looking, all the same.

After what feels like an hour she finds what's left of her old helmet, half-buried in a bank of snow. Somebody must have discarded it, she thinks. It wouldn't have come off by itself while she fell - not without taking most of her head with it.

So somebody must have taken it off, after finding her body - to check her identity, maybe - and then thrown it away. Abandoned it like it was nothing but trash; like it wasn't important. Just like they'd abandoned the bodies of almost two dozen of her old crew. Left them here to moulder in the snow while her body was taken away to be experimented on, tested and (maybe?) revived.

The thought makes her very angry.

She should have died on the Citadel, she thinks. Should have been killed by the wreckage of the Reaper they'd fought; dying with so many others as what was left of Sovereign crashed back into the Presidium. She should have died along with all the people she'd failed to save. That would have been a fitting end, wouldn't it?

Or earlier, maybe: on Virmire, staying behind to protect the bomb, giving her life in place of Ash. Or on Eden Prime, falling to the geth instead of Jenkins. Deep under the surface of Torfan, in the dark strongholds of the batarian pirates, where so many of her own squad had laid down their lives. Or even on Mindoir, the world she was born, instead of the brother whose face she can't remember.

She shouldn't have died here, on a routine patrol, hunting for scattered geth in a system that nobody cared about. Her death should have meant something.

She realises that she's shivering; that she has been for some time. Her body doesn't react to the elements the way it used to, but it's so cold down here, even in her suit. She'd always hated the cold.

She breathes out, slowly and steadily. Watches the oxygen readings on her HUD flash reassuringly green. Somebody with her name and her face died here, but right now, in this moment, she is alive.

There's a faint but persistent beep coming from the communicator built into her suit. A priority message from the _Normandy_ ; not the original, of course - that ship is lying in pieces around her - but the ship that Cerberus built to takes its place. The new _Normandy_ is bigger and more powerful than the original, but it's also - in some indefinable way - somehow less than the Alliance vessel whose name it bears.

It's an imperfect copy, perhaps, but it's all that's left. It'll do.

She sets the helmet back down where she'd found it, as gently as she can, and heads back to the shuttle. She still has work to do.

**Author's Note:**

> I always try to put off the Normandy Crash Site assignment as long as possible. You can do it pretty much immediately, of course, but it never feels right to do it early. (It’s also a bit jarring that Hackett sends you a message about it before you’ve first returned to the Citadel, and before anybody in the Alliance should even know you’re alive.)
> 
> I’ve borrowed the repeated phrase ‘Death is not lived through’ from Ken MacLeod, whose early novels frequently deal with the concept of sufficiently-advanced technology being used to resurrect the dead (and do so in a lot more depth than ME2 can). But I think MacLeod himself was quoting the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
> 
> I do not own Mass Effect, MacLeod’s Fall Revolution series or the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.


End file.
